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ZvQO Sermons 

BY 
REV. WILLIAM E. BARTON, D. D., L L. D. 

The First Delivered on the Sunday Following the Outbreak of the 

World War, and the Second on the Sunday Following 

the Signing of the Armistice. 



Printed by Request 



Oak Park 

First Congregational Church 

1918 




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The first of these two sermons was delivered on the first Sunday after the 
outbreak of hostilities in Europe in August, 1914. Dr. Barton was in his old 
pulpit in Boston, and was entertained in the home of friends. He had intended 
to preach a sermon which he had already used in Oak Park on a theme in no 
way related to the war; but the news of the invasion of Belgium altered his 
plans. He rose early on Sunday morning, and casting aside the sermon which 
he had brought with him, prepared this one. Without his knowledge at the 
time, the sermon was reported for the benefit of such of his former parishioners 
as were unable to be present, by Miss Emma P. Hutchins, of Boston. It is 
printed from her stenographic report. This sermon was repeated in Oak Park 
Sunday, October 4, 1914. 

From time to time while the war has been in progress. Dr. Barton has 
preached sermons more or less related to it or to some outstanding event 
prominent at the time in the minds of the congregation. Four of these sermons 
have been printed as they appeared. 

Of these sermons, and of all others delivered in this pulpit during this exacting 
period, it can be said truthfully that they combine a strong patriotism with a 
genuinely Christian internationalism. Their uncompromising indignation against 
oppression, the violation of treaties and the perpetration of atrocities has been 
expressed in a temper devoid of hate. Up to the time that America actually 
entered the war, Dr, Barton earnestly hoped that it might be possible for her to 
perform her mission in the world peacefully; but he never doubted the justice of 
our nation's cause, or faltered in his faith in ultimate and decisive victory for 
the right. To him the war was a crusade for humanity. 

It was the belief expressed in this first sermon and in many others, that God 
was not only regnant, King of the flood, but that "in all their affliction He was 
afflicted with them." Believing this, it was impossible not to believe also, that 
God was seeking to work out a larger salvation through the world's fear and 
trembling, and that even the fear and trembling were of significance to God. 
Being of such significance, the preacher could not doubt that the suffering of 
war was, as this sermon declared, "the birth agony of a new democracy." From 
the beginning of the war to its triumphant close, the faith of this pulpit has 
been that of — 

"One who never turned his back, but marched breast-forward, — 

Never doubted clouds would break, — 

Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph." 

After the war had closed, a quotation from this discourse, which had been 
preached at its beginning, led to a request for the printing of the sermon entire. 

The other sermon was preached on the Sunday morning after the signing 
of the Armistice, and was one of several addresses delivered by Dr. Barton 
on the same general theme. Beginning at 4 o'clock on Monday morning, 
November 11, when a procession marched to the Parsonage and assembled on 
the lawn and were addressed by him from the veranda, he was speaking almost 
continuously. He spoke at the Chicago Ministers' Meeting on the same morning, 
and also spoke in the Oak Park and River Forest High School, the Austin High 
School, the Warrington Theater and at a number of celebrations in other places. 
He had been so confident of peace that the two services of November 10 had 
been arranged as "A Prophecy of Peace." This sermon, therefore, contains a 
part only of what he said when peace came, but it is the most carefully prepared 
of that week's addresses, and excepting for the opening paragraphs, which were 
delivered without being written, and as here recalled, may include some sentences 
from the other addresses of the week, it is printed from the manuscript which he 
wrote in that week and delivered on Sunday morning, November 18, 1918. It 
was followed immediately by an address before the Men's Bible Class, on "The 
Constructive Problems of World Democracy," which address the Men's Bible 
Class has printed. 

— 2 — 

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The principal sermons delivered by Dr. Barton and dealing with the war have 
been the following: 

I. THE PRAISE OF THE WRATH OF MAN 

"Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee; 
The remainder of wrath wilt thou restrain." Psalm 76:10. 
Shawmut Church, Boston, August 9, and Oak Park, October 4, 1914. A forecast 
of the birth of a new world-democracy. Printed in full in this pamphlet. 

II. THE MIDNIGHT INTUITION 

"And when the fourteenth night was come, as we were driven to and fro in the 
Sea of Adria, about midnight the sailors surmised that they were drawing near 
to some country." Acts 27:27. 

Oak Park, September 13, 1914; Dr. Barton's first sermon in the home church 
after the outbreak of the war; an expression of faith that the hurricane of war 
and the tides of God were driving the world through hazard and loss to the haven 
of God's purpose for humanity, whose shores were indistinctly discernable through 
the night of storm. 

III. WHEN THE SHIP GOES DOWN 

"But the centurian commanded that they who could swim should cast them- 
selves overboard, and get first to land; and the rest, some on planks, and some 
on broken pieces of the ship; and so it came to pass that they all escaped to 
land." Acts 27:43,44. 

Oak Park, Sunday, May 8, 1915. The Lusitania had been sunk on the previous 
Friday afternoon. May 5, 1915. 

IV. THE SWORD AND THE FOREST 

"For the battle was there, spread over the face of all the country; and the 
forest devoured more people that day than the sword destroyed." II Samuel 18:18. 

Oak Park, September 12, 1915; first sermon after the summer vacation, with a 
reminder that war is dangerous to men's ideals as well as to their lives, and with 
a warning not to let the hope of humanity get lost in the woods. 

V. THE PRESENT CRISIS 

"For that nation and kingdom that will not serve thee shall perish; yea, those 
nations shall be utterly wasted." Isaiah 60:12. 

Oak Park, February 11, 1917; at the time of breaking of diplomatic relations 
on receipt of the German note notifying the United States of the resumption of 
unrestricted submarine warfare. It declared that the nation that thus defied the 
laws of God and humanity was rushing to its own certain doom. 

— 3 — 



LIST OF DR. BARTON'S WAR SERMONS 



VI. OUR FIGHT FOR THE HERITAGE OF HUMANITY 

"And Moses said unto the children of Gad and to the children of Reuben, Shall 
your brethren go to the war, and shall ye sit here? And they came near unto 
him and said, We will build sheepfolds here for our cattle, and cities for our 
little ones: but we ourselves will be ready armed to go before the children of 
Israel, until we have brought them unto their place: and our little ones shall 
dwell in the fortified cities because of the inhabitants of the land. We will not 
return unto our house, until the children of Israel have inherited every man his 
inheritance." Numbers 32:6, 16-18. 

Oak Park. April 15, 1917; after the declaration of war against Germany. This 
sermon has been printed by the Men's Bible Class. 

VII. THE INTERNATIONAL GOD 

"In that day shall there be a highway out of Egypt to Assyria, and the 
Assyrians shall come into Egypt, and the Egyptians into Assyria; and the 
Egyptians shall worship with the Assyrians. In that day shall Israel be the 
third with Egypt and with Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth; for that 
Jehovah of hosts hath blessed them, saying Blessed be Egypt my people, and 
Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel mine inheritance." Isaiah 19:23-25. 

Oak Park, May 27, 1917; Memorial Day. A sermon declaring the principle on 
which, after the war, the world must seek unitedly a righteous basis of living. 

VIII. THE YEAR OF THE COMING OF THE WORD OF GOD 

"Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate 
being governor of Judea and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother 
Philip tetrarch of the region of the Iturea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch 
of Abilene, in the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came 
unto John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness." Luke 3:1-2. 

Oak Park, January 6. 1918. A New Year's sermon, expressing the hope that 
a year beginning in war would bring to men a message from God, and before the 
end of the year a righteous and durable peace. 

IX. TARRYING WITH THE STUFF 

"As his share is that goeth down to the battle, so shall his share be that 
tarryeth by the stuff; they shall share alike." I Samuel 30:24. 

Oak Park, April 20, 1918; a sermon to those whose duty keeps them at home. 

X. OUR FATHERS AND OUR SONS 

"These things spake Jesus; and lifting up his eyes unto heaven, he said. Father, 
the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee."— John 17:1. 

Oak Park, Memorial Day, May 26, 1918. A sermon in honor of the heroes of 
1861 and of 1918, the fathers and sons of the present generation. 

XI. THE MORAL MEANINGS OF THE WORLD WAR 

"And when David rose up in the morning, the word of Jehovah came unto the 
prophet Gad, David's seer, saying, Go and speak unto David, Thus saith Jehovah, 
I offer thee three things: choose thee one of them that I may do it unto thee. 
So Gad came to David, and said unto him. Shall seven years of famine come unto 
thee in thy land? or wilt thou flee three months before thy foes while they pursue 
thee? or shall there be three days' pestilence in thy land? now advise thee, and con- 
sider what answer I shall return to him that sent me. And David said unto 
Gad, I am in a great strait; let us fall now into the hand of Jehovah; for his 
mercies are great; and let me not fall into the hand of man." II Samuel 24:11-14. 

Oak Park, Sunday, June 16, 1918, and in Broadway Tabernacle, New York; 
Shawmut Church, Boston; Central Church, Fall River; Piedmont Church, Wor- 
cester; Beneficent Church, Providence; and other cities during the following 
summer. This sermon has been printed by the Men's Bible Class. 

— 4 — 



LIST OF DR. BARTON'S WAR SERMONS 



XII. THE DESCENT FROM THE CROSS 

"If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross." Matthew 27:40 
Communion service, September 8, 1918. An answer to the question, Why 
do not God and the Church end the war? 

XIII. THE PRICE OF PEACE 

"They have healed the hurt of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when 
there is no peace." Jeremiah 6:14. 

"Through him to reconcile all things unto himself, having made peace through 
the blood of his cross." Colossians 1:20. 

"And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall guard your 
hearts and your thoughts in Christ Jesus." Philippians 4:7. 

Oak Park, Sunday, October 13, 1918. This sermon was printed by the men 
of the Church. 

XIV. THE REBUILDING OF THE WORLD 

"Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old. Be- 
hold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it?" 
Isaiah 43:18,19. 

Oak Park, Sunday, November 18, 1918. This sermon is printed in full in 
this pamphlet. 

XV. WORSHIPPNG OUR CAPTURED IDOLS 

"Now it came to pass, after that Amaziah had come from the slaughter of the 
Edomites, that he brought the gods of the children one Seir, and set them up to 
be his gods, and bowed down himself before them, and burned incense unto 
them." II Chronicles 25:14. 

Sunday evening, November 24, 1918. 

A plea that America, having gone to war in a spirit of idealism, should not 
herself be overcome by the evils she had been fighting, and become a victim of 
the spirit of militarism and autocracy. 

XVI. THE CONSTRUCTIVE PROBLEMS OF WORLD DEMOCRACY 

Address before the Men's Bible Class, Sunday, November 18, 1918. Printed 
by that class. 



•6 — 



©I|? Pratfi? of tt|p Uratli of Mm 

(Delivered Sunday Morning, August 9, 1914) 



This is a text from which I have never preached, and I turn to it with deep 
interest and not a little solicitude this morning. It reads — 

"Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee, and the remainder of wrath shalt 
thou restrain," Psalm 76:10. 

Thank God that this Psalm, written in a time of violence, found somebody 
undismayed; that in the wreck of established institutions and the conflict and 
strife of men there was somebody who had faith enough and vision enough, and 
spiritual inspiration enough, to believe not only that God was good and still 
regnant, but that the very forces of evil conspired somehow to further the will 
of God. I imagine if you had asked him to prove it; I imagine if you had asked 
him to preach a sermon in which he would set forth in terms of severe logic a 
demonstration of the truth which he thus declared, he would have refused to 
discuss it after that fashion. It is not by process of logic that we know truths 
so profound as this. Something that makes for the credibility of such a declaration, 
however, cries out of the experience of the ages. 

It is rather remarkable that there should be any wrath of man. It is rather 
remarkable that a loving God should make anybody capable of wrath; that into a 
world that a good God has made, such power to thwart the apparent will of God 
should have been permitted to man. It is strange that the question ever should 
have been p>ermitted to rise; that any mind should have had occasion to question 
whether the wrath of man could defeat the will of God. 

There is only one religion that is brave enough to face all the facts cf life, the 
bitter and the unpleasant facts as well as the facts that are agreeable and readily 
intelligible. It is no cheap and easy optimism which we find in the Bible. It is an 
optimism which arrives at its basis of assurance through conflict; that discovers 
its certainty of divine love while looking squarely in the face of the contentions 
and the sorrows of the world. 

Seven Possible Interpretations of an Improbabk World 

There are seven ways which occur to me in which people may interpret life. 
The first is this: to say that any attempt to discriminate between good and evil is 
subjective; that we have no valid reason to believe that any such distinction exists 
in the world; that all things are equally good and equally pure in the universe at 
large; that a thing that is not good for one purpose is good for another, and that 
probably nothing is really good or evil at all; that the terms good and evil are 
only our attempt to superimpose our own subjective and variable judgments on a 
universe that is inherently non-ethical. That is the first way; to my mind an 
utterly inadequate attempt to account for life and the universe. 

Second: The second theory holds that there may be good, and probably is; 



THE PRAISE OF THE WRATH OF MAN 



that there may be evil, and probably is; at least, there exist in the universe such 
currents and counter currents as seem to us to be good and evil; forces which we 
cannot account for except by calling them so; but that to distinguish any moral 
purpose in the flux of things is utterly impossible for us; that the forces do not 
simply counteract each other, but they are a confused mass of counter currents, 
which may or may not come to an ethical result; and that they have no ultimate 
destination so far as we can see; so that while there is a possibility or even a 
probability of good and evil, those qualities exist, if they do exist, without dis- 
coverable ultimate purpose. 

Third: The third is a dualistic philosophy. It affirms that there is good and 
there is evil, equally divided as day and night are equally divided, two permanent 
and opposing forces. One of the Chinese philosophies represents this doctrine 
graphically by a reverse curve carefully drawn through a circle, half of it light 
and half of it dark. You may draw through such a circle a diameter in any 
direction through the center, always half will be light and half will be dark. Some 
of the philosophies and some of the religions of the world, even some that call 
themselves Christian, are based essentially upon that fundamental hostility. There 
are even Christians who so exalt the devil into a kind of negative God as logically 
to classify themselves in the category of dualists. 

Fourth: The fourth is the philosophy of pure pessimism, which is to say that 
the evil in the world is so undeniable, so present in even the best of what men call 
good, that the Creator (if there be one) is to be judged only by the world which 
He has made, and we cannot know Him to be good or imagine Him to be other 
than malignant. Presumably the Creator is just as good and just as bad as the 
world which He has made; and being so. He could not have made the world 
as bad as it is if He had not been fundamentally bad at heart. Whatever good 
there is, according to this theory, is just enough to save us from suicide, and the 
Creator desires us to live that we may suffer a little longer. This is the philosophy 
of Schopenhauer, and of Nietzsche. This philosophy is growing in some sections 
of polite society. There is something to be said for it. To my mind there is just 
enough truth in it to emphasize its utter and infernal folly. 

Fifth: The next is a complete antithesis of the one we have been considering. 
It holds that God is good and only good and eternally good and there cannot enter 
into His life and into His purpose any conception of evil; and therefore the world 
is good and only good, and nothing in it can be anything else than good, and we 
are to deny that anything is evil or that evil could be. 

Sixth : The sixth teaches that God is good and God always has been good, and 
God always will be good, but the world is bad, as bad at present as it can be; 
and probably getting worse. But if you ask how a good God could make a bad 
world, the answer is that it was made good and something happened to it ; a snake 
got in, or the devil — into the garden, or into the heart of a man or a woman, one 
or both. In the beginning God made all good and something occurred to it to 
change it, and whether it now can be repaired is the problem of Theology. Some 
think it is getting better and some think it is getting worse, but the idea is of a 
perfect world in the beginning, the mirror of the mind of a perfect God, but a 
world which has met with some moral mishap. 

I will not stop to speak of these six. Each of them has its stout defenders. 
All of them to my mind are inadequate. 

Seventh: We come now to the last. It calls for the most of faith of any, 

— 8 — 



THE PRAISE OF THE WRATH OF MAN 

in that it calls for the most of perfect vision of them all. It says that God is good, 
fundamentally and eternally good, and that He has made a world the bed rock of 
which is His own everlasting goodness; that the undeniable evil that is in it is 
somehow the experssion of His goodness; that the world has never gotten away 
from Him; that God is still in the saddle; that God is still on the throne; God is 
still King of the world; that even the forces of evil and unrestraint are under His 
control, working out a more glorious form of His eternal gooodness than the world 
yet has seen. Now, that calls for no cheap and easy optimism. Over against 
the easier, cheaper forms which sing and trip along — 

"God's in His heaven, 
All's right in the world." 

this says, "God is working in His world, and all's right with His heaven." God 
made a good world, but a world that lacked the perfection of moral character, 
because character is the one good thing which God cannot furnish ready made. The 
world never has been perfect, but is working toward perfection. 

I think that was the philosophy of Paul. I think that was the philosophy also 
of this man who wrote our text. He lived evidently in a time of war, evidently in 
a time of strife, but though he looked out and saw the nations mad with violence 
and hate, he also looked up to heaven with a serene faith and said "God is good. 
The war is to accomplish good. There is peace which the world cannot give and 
the war cannot take away. Even the wrath of man shall praise Thee." 

The New and Larger Sciences 

That man might have been an astronomer, and he might have looked out and 
said, "This silent starry heaven is not silent after all. There are worlds smashing 
together with terrific violence, and by that process world life and world structure are 
built up." He might have been a geologist and have said, "The silent rocks, the 
peaceful and eternal rocks, were not so silent and peaceful after all. Volcanoes 
belched, and earthquakes rocked and tore up the earth, and glaciers froze it to 
make it the habitable world on which we live." The clash of worlds in the sky 
and the upheaving of rocks on earth did not thwart the purpose of God, but in 
some strange way as the astronomer knows it, in some marvelous way as the 
geologist knows it, they wrought out the will of God. The wrath of the wreck of 
worlds, and the wrath of the upheaving rocks praise Him, as the astronomer tells 
us and as the geologist tells us. 

I dined one night a few weeks ago with Prof. T. C. Chamberlin of the University 
of Chicago, and I asked him, "What is the dividing line between Geology and 
Astronomy?" If I had been just a little more ignorant than I am, I might have 
supposed that the business of the geologist stopped with the surface of the earth; 
but I knew better than that. 

He did not hesitate a minute. He knew just how far his science had property 
rights. He said that it ended at the point where the earth's attraction equalled 
that of the sun; the point on the one side of which a body would fall to the earth 
and on the other side toward the sun. He said that point, which varied more or 
less with the three unequal axes of the "spheres of control," had a minfeium radius 
of 620,000 miles. 

I asked, "That is all settled, is it?" 

— 9 — 



THE PRAISE OF THE WRATH OF MAN 



He said, "The precise distance varies, but that is the line of division between 
the astronomers and the geologists."* 

I told him I was glad that they had settled it by mutual agreement. I had 
some fear they would appoint me or a board of arbitration and ask me to survey 
the line. 

Now, the geologist deals with a science that is of the earth earthy and of the 
rocks rocky. His business is strictly underfoot. And yet when you tell him to keep 
his feet on the earth, here he is demanding 620,000 miles up in the air as belonging 
also to his science. 

If the geologist whose science sends him around with a hammer knocking off 
pieces of rock demands 620,000 miles of room above his head for his science, 
I will not heed for a minute the advice of those who advise me to keep always 
on the level of the ground. I will not saw off my vision on the level of my eyes, 
or reserve ijist room enough to wear a silk hat without bumping into impractical 
theories. I am a child of earth, but I am also a child of God. The science with 
which I deal requires as its very base line all that the geologist counts his own ; and 
if I gel as much as that, I think I shall claim more. For all worlds belong to God, 
and in Christ, what is God's is mine. 

The new sciences of the last generation have not failed to modify our thought 
of God. There have been at least a dozen of them. Comparative religion is 
brand new; comparative philology is new, comparative anatomy is new. Every 
science that uses the adjective "comparative" is new. Historical criticism is new; 
history is new. It is no longer a mere chronicle of events. It is a philosophy and 
interpretation of life in the perspective of these events. It is a study of cause and 
efi^ect in the light of human happenings. Social science, sociology, is new. Every 
other science with the adjective "social" is new. All these sciences of life and all 
the physical sciences that use the microscope, that use electricity, that use radium, 
that use the X-ray, all these are new. I was pastor of this church when I first 
looked through my hand with the X-ray. So recently as that; so recently as when 
I was here; yesterday, it seems. It does not seem fifteen years since I left here. 
I was preaching in this church when first I held up my hand and looked through it. 
And every science that recognizes the penetrability of matter to light, and every 
science that attempts to make real the relationships of matter to force is new. 
Half the theories of yesterday are on their way to the scrap heap, and they have not 
left unmodified our conception of God. We are bound either to move God very 
much farther off or bring Him very much closer in to the actual thick of the conflict 
of life. The conception of God just barely outside, the conception of Paley's 
Natural Philosophy, of a universe which God wound up like a watch and left it 
for us to find, a universe wound up by a God who went off and forgot it, save for 
an occasional intrusion by the process of a miracle — that conception of God, good as 
it was in its day, will not answer for now. It is not adequate to the strain; God 
must be moved farther out, or brought closer in than the thought of the old 
theology — and the old theology was good in its day. 

The World as a Divine Experiment Station 

I met Dan Crawford at Northfield, and I met him afterward. You know how 
he divided his discourses. He would say, "Now, friends, bear in mind while I 

*See "The Origin of the Earth," by T. C. Chamberlin, p. 18. 

— 10 — 



THE PRAISE OF THE WRATH OF MAN 



speak that this subject of mine has these three divisions relating to my experiences 
of twenty-two years in Africa. First, boring in ; second, shut in ; third, boring out." 
Then he proceeded to forget those divisions and would say no more about them. 

Well, we must face the question whether God is boring into life from the 
outside, or whether God is in and still (I say it reverently) shut in. Shall I say 
that the vital question is whether God has voluntarily imprisoned Himself in the 
mechanism of His universe, in its very structure, and is boring out and carrying 
His purpose with Him? You must choose between the two, and I have chosen 
with a great and radiant joy in the firm belief that God is in, and is boring out, 
coming gloriously out through the conflict, coming out through strife, coming out 
through the experiences of human life which we are tempted to deny. But God 
is regnant through it all, undismayed, unterrified, regal, supreme. 

If you please you may go back and classify your thinking in terms of any 
of the old theologies — no man can attempt to keep up with the modern scientific 
spirit and keep near enough to it even to touch the hem of its garment and not 
be more of a Calvinist than he ever was before. He is driven by inexorable 
logic into believing more in a supreme God who has wrought His life into the very 
structure of things, and who is working out His own supreme and loving purposes. 
Now that calls for faith. The world at first blush does not seem built on that 
plan. Human life seems to say "No" to it. 

"Nature, red in tooth and claw, 
With ravin shrieks against the creed." 

Humanity with its thin veneer of civilization and its barbarism just beneath the 
skin seems to say "No" to it also. Alas, how near is civilization to savagery! 
You would not believe it, but the man, the gentleman, who took your ticket in 
Belgium last summer; the gentle guard who doffed his hat to you last summer 
in Berlin; that courteous English policeman who showed you the wav in London 
last summer (not forgetting to accept your tip), you would not believe that all 
those men are facing each other with guns in their hands and hatred in their 
breasts. The world has gone back far toward savagery. It has gone mad. If 
there is anybody more mad than they, who could it be but a Christian minister who 
in the very midst of it should stand up in the pulpit and say, "Nevertheless, God is 
good"? 

We must not lose faith in God. We must not even lose faith in man. In the 
hearts of these very men who are now at war, love is deeper than hatred. Thev 
love their wives and children more than they hate each other. Nav, you shall find 
them on the battlefield caring for each other, after the murder is done, with tender 
brotherliness for all. 

Love, not hate, is the eternal fact. Kindness, not brutalitv, is to reien in the 
earth. The day of the megatherium is gone. The mammoth and all the eicantic 
animals that attempted to rule the world by brute force are either extinct or are 
shut up now in our museums. If we did not catch a few lions and timers to look 
at at twenty-five cents a look, they would not last long. Evervthing that ever 
attempted to dominate this world with mere brute force has gone or is doomed to go, 
save man. 

Well, yes, you say, and that is the worst of it. Hate still is in the soul of man, 
and there it lingers. The sword and the dagger still are there; brute passion 
still is there; men still are murderers. Oh, yes, God forgive them! Christ pity 

— H — 



THE PRAISE OF THE WRATH OF MAN 



them! Nineteen hundred years after the crucifixion! But God is undismayed by 
it. The hearts of men, with all their hatred and cruelty, are not quite so bestial, 
not quite so venomous, not quite so deadly as they were in the past. Bad as the 
present is, the past was not quite so merciful. 

I went through the historical museum at The Hague with the guide and inter- 
preter, who tells three times over the story of the instruments of torture; once in 
Dutch, once in French, and once in English, and so one could get pieces of his 
story at least twice and maybe little bits of it three times. After showing us 
these delivish devices of men, who tortured in unnameable, indescribable fashion 
the flesh of their fellow men, when he had finished and shown us one particularly 
horrible instrument of torture, he said, "And all these things happened in what we 
call 'the good old times.' " Well, the good old times were good old times because 
they v/ere better than the times that were not then so new. They were good, 
not because they were old, but because they were better than the times a little 
more remote when man was still a little more brutal. But the good old times 
were bad old times, and the good present will be the bad past when the better 
future comes. Yet it will give us courage if we can walk with God in the process 
of construction of His work, and learn somehow to differentiate the task from the 
tool; to discriminate between the unfinished product and the shavings; and to see 
that God after all is good. 

It took a lot of faith on the part of Paul to write the chapter which I read this 
morning (Romans 5), of how the world seemed to be complete until the law 
edged in sidewise, intruded, came into a completed sphere. It is the one thing 
which no philosophy can account for, this thing of man's being an independent 
cause. No one is wise enough to explain this thing of his being able to lift the 
burden and drop it again, and by so much to interfere with the eternal law of 
gravitation. There is no philosophy under the sun that accounts for that. Every 
system of philosophy is complete except for the man that makes the philosophy. 
That man is never wrought consistently into the plan of his own device. He still 
stands on the outside, and the law intrudes. If I knew a m.ore abrupt phrase than 
that I would use it, because there is not anything abrupt enough for the fact as 
Paul states it, and as philosophy sees it, that the moral element should enter 
into a scheme of creation that would have been complete and consistent if there 
had been only one mind and that the mind of God. The making of other minds 
subject to the moral element brought law. It came in sideways, it edged in, and 
made a lot of trouble from the start. And the reason given for it does not seem 
to be a good one. "The law came in sideways," (and that looks like an intrusion) 
"that the offence might abound" (and that does not seem to be a very good 
reason) "but where sin abounded" (and that tells the character of the offence) 
"grace shall much more abound." I wonder if this is true! Paul was man enough 
to face the problem and to believe that grace much more abounded than sin. He 
believed that while God is working out the way of salvation for us, and we are 
working out our own salvation in fear and trembling, God is working through our 
fear and trembling. 

Just here I wonder if some timid soul would like to Stop me and say, "Be 
careful! Be careful! Do you mean to say that God is working out His own 
salvation?" 

I am being sufficiently careful, and I know how to answer that question. It 
depends upon pur definition of salvation. If we mean salvation from sin, my 

— 12 — 



THE PRAISE OF THE WRATH OF MAN 



answer is in the negative; but if salvation be the full realization of the meaning 
and possibility of personality, then I will not hesitate to say that God is working 
out His salvation. 

"Be careful ! Be careful ! " I think I hear the same friend say. "Do you mean 
that God fears and trembles?" 

No, I do not mean that, and I do not believe that. On the other hand, I do 
not believe in an unconcerned, a detached God, a complacent or static God. I do 
not believe in a God who inflicts suffering upon humanity and bears no share in it 
Himself. I believe that God is in control, and that God is not fearing and 
trembling. 

But nevertheless our fear and trembling have eternal significance in the mind 
of God. God has gone to the very limit. He is doing things in this world that He 
never did in the same way in any other world. The world is an experiment station 
for God. God is having new experiences. God is bringing things to pass in the 
outworking of His own life which He never did before. Our working, our fear 
and trembling is the life of God in evolution. Listen and hear the Apostle Paul 
where he says that in this mighty progress there is not merely the increase of human 
life, but that it "increaseth with the increase of God." 

Now I come back, and at least I know this much about the praise of the wrath 
of man. God is moving with no uncertainty; but God took account of human 
wrath, and even that shall praise Him. Yes, I am sure it is true. 

The Restraint of the Remainder 

The last part of the text is one which is obscure right where we wish it to be 
plain. "The remainder of wrath will he restrain." It is unfortunate that we 
cannot quite tell what the exact meaning of the Hebrew word is. There is a 
positive element, not the mere negative, in that word translated "restrain." And 
there arises a remainder even at the end. Is God's life to be one single irresistible 
force? Apparently not. The worlds are held in place not by one force but by 
two forces, centripetal and centrifugal, both equal, both making for everlasting 
progress through resistance. God is marching on. God is forever making 
progress even in that which seems to impede and thwart Him. 

Shall We Pray for the End of the War? 

Maybe if you and I knew what to pray for today, we should not pray that 
the war in Europe might cease tomorrow. Maybe we would pray, if we were wise 
and had faith, that it might continue until the nations learn their last bitter lesson, 
and so the very murderous character of the war should more speedily insure a 
universal peace. We have not faith enough to pray for that. I do not dare to 
pray for that. I am not wise enough to pray for that. All that I can pray for 
is that God may mercifully work His perfect will, and that after the storm there 
may be the calm. I think we may believe that the fiercer this war, the sooner 
and surer will come the abiding blessedness of peace. 

The Birth Agony of a New Democracy 

I know, for I have read history a little, that the more of hatred and bitterness 
there is now, the more stable may be the peace that is sure to follow. War cannot 
endure forever. It may be that this war is the fwophecy and promise of a new 

— 13 — 



THE PRAISE OF THE WRATH OF MAN 



friendliness; that a new and universal brotherliness may grow out of it. It may 
be the birth agony of a new democracy. It may be that kings and despots will 
tremble tomorrow when they reckon with their own people, now so recklessly sent 
to slaughter. Still by one man sin comes into the world and death by sin, but it 
may be that when this war ends we shall find no one man on the throne who 
holds such power for evil usrestrained. It may be that kings will learn through 
this war that they represent Jesus Christ and not their own self will. It may be 
that every monarch on earth v^ll learn what previous wars have not yet taught, 
that every king must secure peace and righteousness for the p>eople. It may be 
that after the battle between kings is over the battle for the rights of the people 
will come. It may be that democracy and brotherhood and the righteous reign 
of Jesus Christ are coming nearer in the march of the armies. 

"We are living, we are dwelling, 

In a grand and awful time; 
In an age on ages telling 

To be living is sublime." 

A coward, despairing, may bewail the age in which he lives. Like Hamlet he 
may mourn that the time: are out of joint and he cannot set them right. But a 
brave man will look into the face of God and be calm. Love and not hatred, 
peace and not strife, justice and not oppression, are eternal. God is good, and 
sits high on the throne. Though the nations rage and the people imagine a vain 
thing, Jesus Christ is king of kings, and sovereign also of the hearts of men. The 
kingdoms of the world are even now in process of becoming the kingdom of our 
Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever. Amen. 



14 — 



(Delivered Sunday morning, November 18, 1918) 



Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old. Be- 
hold, I will do a new thing; now shall it spring forth; shall ye not know it? 
Isaiah 43:18-19. 

I am sorry for anyone who cannot preach today! 

If I had never preached before, and could never enter a pulpit again, I should 
be glad and thankful that on this day I am a minister of the Gospel, and that it is 
my privilege to be alive in times like this, and to seek to interpret to men and 
women the spiritual aspects of the events in the midst of which we are living. 

Babylon is fallei/! God hath made bare His mighty arm in the sight of the 
nations! The nation whose sins had reached unto heaven, that waxed wanton 
and filled the earth with her iniquities, now is humbled to the dust. In one hour 
hath her judgment come. TTie power that exalted might above right has found that 
might cannot stand against right. ' The power that did wanton murder with her 
submarines has surrendered her navies. She that dropped death from the clouds 
on unfortified towns, has surrendered her airplanes. She who filled the air with 
poison gas now flees from the ruin which rolled backward upon her. Upon her 
own head has descended the evil that she wrought and sought to work in greater 
measure upon other nations. She took up the sword and has perished by the 
sword. 

Her monarch and foremost exponent of her ambition and unholy purpose 
shares in the ruin which his wicked devices have brought upon his people. He said 
to Ambassador Gerard, "I will stand no nonsense from America after the war." 
He made a correct prediction. He is standing no nonsense from us now, and he 
will stand none from us hereafter. Shorn of his titles, stripped of the last vestige 
of his power, he is this day a fugitive from justice, hiding his uncrowned head in 
one of the little neutral nations which he so long had menaced and bullied. "Die 
Wacht am Rhein" has become one of the spoils of war; there is such a watch, and 
our boys, and the British and the French are going to keep it! 

We have done well, and still do well to rejoice. But that is not our whole duty. 
From the effervescence of noisy glee we turn to the serious problems which come 
to us with peace. We were unprepared for war, and I for one am glad of it; I am 
glad that we did not enter the war a day sooner than we did. But from that day 
I have believed that we had a most righteous cause, that ours was a holy crusade 
for the rights of mankind, and we were not unprepared in heart for such a crusade. 
In the great victory, America has her honorable share, and America will have a 
large share in the problems which peace will bring. We were unprepared for 
war, and are pardonable for that; but it will be unpardonable if we are found 
unprepared for peace. 

The Hebrew nation lived and still lives in the contemplation of its glorious 
history. Above all other peoples it remembered the former things and considered 

— 15 — 



THE REBUILDING OF THE WORLD 



the days of old. For this habit of mind the prophets were primarily responsible. 
They continually exhorted the people whom they addressed to consider God's 
wonderful dealings with His people as manifest in the signs and wonders of the 
past. Yet it is notable that the greatest of these prophets were continually inter- 
preting the nation's new experiences in terms of a providence so large that nothing 
in the past life, even of Israel, afforded an adequate precedent or prediction of it. 
Jeremiah confidently anticipated a time when the nation would no lonser say, "As 
Jehovah liveth that brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt," 
but "As Jehovah liveth who is doing greater things than that and doing them in our 
own day" (Jeremiah 16:14). One or two of his utterances are even more 
startling, and must have shocked the people who heard him with a feeling that 
Jeremiah wholly undervalued the great history of his nation. Jeremiah would 
have answered that no man living valued his nation's past more highly than he did, 
but that it was his distinction to have a higher appreciation of the spiritual sig- 
nificance of the then present hour than most of his contemporaries. 

The prophets of the Old Testament have received great honor since their 
death because of their ability to forecast coming events. Tliere is reason to 
believe that most of these men would have said that they cared less to be accounted 
as possessing accurate prevision of the future than of being able clearlv to discern 
and adequately to interpret the spiritual implications of the ages in which severally 
they lived and to which they ministered. The second part of the book of Isaiah, 
containing as it does the noblest of the prophecies of the return from exile, stands 
high above even the great altitude of other Old Testament prophecy in its exhibi- 
tion of this quality. "Remember ye not the former things" said this great prophet, 
"neither consider the things of old." Why not? Because God was even then 
doing things so much larger, doing them even while the prophet was speaking. 
"Behold I will do a new thing," he represents God as saying. "It is springing forth 
just now; can you not recognize it, and discern its spiritual significance ?" 

What were the former things which he wanted the people of Israel to forget? 
They included such events as the deliverance of Israel from the bondage of 
Egypt; the passage of the Red Sea; the divine guidance through the wilderness; 
the crossing of the Jordan; the conquest of Canaan, and all the signs and wonders 
which to this day are taught not only to Jewish children but to Christian congre- 
gations as among the outstanding events in the spiritual life of the world. Of 
course the prophet had no thought that the people whom he addressed should 
completely ignore those wonderful manifestations of divine providence, but he 
was quite right in his conviction that God was at the moment doing greater things. 

What was it that the prophet believed to be so great that it overshadowed the 
exodus in its spiritual significance? It was the return of Israel from Babylon, 
the rebuilding of Jerusalem and of the Temple, and the reinterpretation of its 
national hope in terms of spiritual ideal. The prophet was right about it and 
his utterance was none too strong. 

Do We Realize the Significance of This Hour? 

When will the world ever learn adequately to appreciate the significance of the 
present hour? If ever there was a time when it seemed as though the world and 
the Church realized fully that history was making that time, this is the time. Every 
newspaper is proclaiming, every thoughtful man and woman is saying it. The 
head of the Department of History in one of America's largest universities said a 

— 16 — 



THE REBUILDING OF THE WORLD 



few days ago, "I no longer pretend to be a teacher of history; I am a preacher." 
If we should hold our peace at this time the very stones would cry out, — the 
stones not only of desolate Belgium but the unquarried stones that are to have 
their place in the rebiiftding of a devastated civilization. 

Yet, there is some real danger that we shall content ourselves with the mere 
saying of these things and without very much of actual realization of the meaning 
of our words. There is real peril that we shall interpret progress for the future 
in terms of a restoration of the past. But God is seeking to do a new thing; shall 
we not know it? 

There are only two dates in American history to be associated with that of 
November II, 1918. One of these is July 4, I 776, when the old bell on Independence 
Hall proclaimed liberty throughout all the land; the other is Sunday morning, 
Auril 9, 1865, when the surrender of General Lee proclaimed to the world that 
the United States was one nation and that a free nation. 

In the history of the world there are few dates of such profound international 
significance. We should have to go back to October 10, 732, A. D., when Charles 
Martel drove back the Saracens and saved Europe to Christianity. When we go 
still further back and confine ourselves to secular history, we find no other date 
that means so much till we come to September 20, 480 A. D., when Themistocles 
defeated Xerxes with his great fleet of six hundred ships in the battle of Salamis 
and decided that Christianity, as yet unknown, and not the religion of Mithra, 
should ultimatly rule the world. 

Our whole nation and the nations of our Allies would seem to have realized 
how great a day this is. If the sweeping up and baling of many hundreds of 
tons of waste paper in the streets of our cities can give documentary evidence of 
anything, it assuredly would be this that the people of America knew that Monday, 
November 1 1 , was one of the great days of the world. 

The hands of God's great clock move many times around the dial of the cen- 
turies before an hour like this is struck. 

Never since this war began have I doubted that in the end the power of Germany 
must be humbled. I read in our Scripture lesson this morning words which seem 
to me to have been written for limes like these through which we have been living: 

"I have seen the wicked in great power, 

And spreading himself like a green bay tree, 

But he passed by, and lo, he was not: 

Yea, I sought him, but he could not be found. 

For evil-doers shall be cut off; 

But those that wait for Jehovah, they shall inherit the earth." 

In all this we behold the justice of God; and I had fainted had I not believed 
to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. I rejoice that I have 
always believed that it would be so. I felt that somehow the veracity of God 
was involved in it. I have believed that the nation whose pride and cruelty devised 
such things was doomed to a hell of its own creation. And I thank God that I have 
lived to see this day. 

The Problem of Rebuilding 

What great thing is God now about to do? 

He is about to rebuild the world, but is greatly troubled by the labor situation. 
There is serious danger that Almighty God will not be able sufficiently to mobilize 
the man power requisite to the undertaking; and if He gets the raw material for 

— 17 — 



THE REBUILDING OF THE WORLD 

such an army as the present hour demands, it will still be necessary that He pro- 
vide for its adequate leadership. 

The rebuilding of the world must begin very near to the bottom. There are 
some elements in its obliquity for which we see no immediate remedy, but there are 
others that can be helped and must be helped at once. This world of ours 
encountered some serious situation early in its career. Something bumped into it 
and knocked it awry. It has been wabbling now nobody knows how long with its 
poles at a ridiculous angle of twenty-three degrees and a little more to the plane of 
the ecliptic. To this prehistoric jolt we are permitted to charge our shocking bad 
climate, our catarrh, very likely the Spanish influenza and some of our bad temper. 
It is not an ideal world that stands thus with a perpetual obliquity to its fore- 
ordained orbit; but it gets on after a fashion, and even climate has something to be 
said in its favor as affording an opportunity for four seasons and a considerable 
amount of Christian patience. There is no present motion before the house to 
correct the inclination of the earth axis; we shall have to get on with it as it is; 
but some things, almost as fundamental we can and must do. 

We must restore the fertility of devastated fields. We must fill in the trenches, 
and when we have filled them we shall find a good deal of the clay on top and much 
of the fertile soil at the bottom. We must provide potash, which should have 
gone into the production of food but has gone into the making of explosives. We 
must rehabilitate roads that are deep-rutted by cannon, and railroads whose bridges 
are burned. We must erect new cities in place of those that have been destroyed 
by shell-fire. We must build ships to take the place of those that lie with all their 
cargoes in the bottom of the ocean. The physical task of rebuilding this cruelly 
devastated world will tax the ingenuity of God and the industry of man to their 
very limit. 

But this is a small part of it. The world, as God made it, was a highly im- 
probable world, but so far as the physical earth is concerned we could have 
managed to get on very well. Men have always made the mistake of supposing 
that what we most needed was to have the earth destroyed, either by flood or fire, 
and to start over again. This does not seem to be the essential problem. The 
earth itself can be made to answer the essential requirements of a settled moral 
order. It has just been decided by high authorities in the game of golf that a 
match game, which was won by the occurrence of a slight earthquake when the ball 
was lying on the edge of the hole, is not fairly won; no golf player is at liberty 
to shake the world for the sake of getting his ball into the hole, or saving himself 
the energy or hazard of another stroke. God has sent this world on rather a dizzy 
drive since it first moved off the tee of creation. But God is playing the game in 
strict accordance with the rules. 

The World Was Not Right Before the War 

The mistake which Israel made, and which we are in danger of making, 
is that of assuming that everything was right until the war broke out, and that all 
we need is to get things back into the condition where they were before the war. 
The truth is that if matters had been right before the war there would have been 
no war. The historians of the Old Testament might well have claimed as their 
chief credit a characteristic, which from the standpoint of the analytic historian 
affords ground for their severest criticism. They had an incurable habit of inter- 
preting the vicissitudes of Israel in terms of its moral and spiritual life. It is quite 
possible on the basis of our archeological discoveries to rewrite Old Testament 

— 18 — 



THE REBUILDING OF THE WORLD 



history from quite another viewpoint and to say that Israel's history was what it 
was by reason of political conditions in Egypt and Babylon and Assyria, and that 
the result would have been essentially the same no matter what God was wor- 
shipped in Israel; but the Old Testament historians knew better than to interpret 
their nation's story in terms of international politics and diplomatic intrigue. They 
knew that the final word about any man, or any king, was that he did that which 
was right or that which was evil in the sight of Jehovah. They would have known 
that Napoleon was wrong when he declared that God was on the side of the heaviest 
battalions, for they were persuaded that it was not by military might nor by political 
power but by the Spirit of the Lord God of hosts that Israel lived its life and per- 
formed its mission. What the world now needs is not to be put back where it was 
before August I, 1914: if the world had been right in 1913 and the years before, 
there would have been no war. 

The Voice of the Church 

If it be the duty of the Church in time of war to constitute itself an agency 
of the government of whatever country it may chance to occupy, and to preach 
patriotic sermons and organize institutions for relief of suffering caused by war, 
then the Church in America has not failed. The following is an editorial pub- 
lished some months ago in the Chicago Daily News: 

"While plenty of young men of military fitness can still be found on the street 
and in amusement places, there is scracely a church in Chicago that has not been 
stripped of its young manhood. The service flag in every place of worship tells 
the story. 

"Many churches have contributed their ministers as chaplains and camp 
pastors, bearing much of the expense of their work. A review of the sermon 
topics indicates that from fully one-half of the pulpits each Sunday come dis- 
courses on patriotic themes. Scores of churches have become great rallying 
centers for patriotism and idealism, the two being linked together in the cause 
of religion, which is the cause of humanity. Every Sunday morning thousands 
of sermons sound forth throughout America the call to persistent effort for a 
complete victory, for justice, which is true righteousness. The purchase of 
Liberty Bonds is declared from many pulpits to be a religious as well as a 
patriotic duty." 

But some of us who have not failed in any such duty as is here indicated, have 
never been willing to admit that this represented our conception of the chief mission 
of the Church. Important as these matters are, they are not the end and aim 
of the life of the Church. 

I have not failed to support any and every good cause associated with the 
work of our country in its gerat struggle for righteousness and peace. I have cut 
my sermon short Sunday after Sunday that I might announce and emphasize every 
movement and every demonstration on behalf of these varied agencies. I did 
not resent it and I do not regret it. But I have been and am jealous that no one 
shall think of the Church of Christ as merely a bulletin board on which to attach 
notices of this, that and the other good cause, or cause believed to be good. The 
Church has a mission of her own. Gladly as she lends all her strength to the 
innumerable good works which manifest in some measure the ideals which she 
is seeking to attain, she has a program and a mission and a message greater than 
any of them and inclusive of all. 

— 19 — 



THE REBUILDING OF THE WORLD 

The Church Has Not Always Appreciated Its Opportunity 

What part is the Church to play in the important task of bringing in the new 
day which we hope and beheve is coming to the world now that the war has ended? 

The question seems to many people a very simple one. It is impossible to 
pick up a paper or a magazine in which the future of the Church is not discussed 
and settled. To many, there seems to be but one answer, which is that the Church 
shall leave off virtually everything that she has been doing, and do very nearly 
everything that hitherto she has left undone. But the answer is not so simple. 

The Church has not always appreciated the times of transition which are her 
times of opportunity. Paul Sabatier wrote of the spiritual opportunity in France 
at the close of the Franco-Prussian War, and how little the Church realized it: 

One saw the old cathedrals invaded by deeply-stirred, vibrating crowds, in 
which the majority was composed of that working element which called itself 
indifferent, skeptical or hostile. Notorious heretics, members of more or less 
Masonic associations, contended for seats with professed devotees, and were 
only remarkable for their attention. . . . The people of France were returning 
to their Mother, quite simply and sincerely, to sit down at her table. . . . 
Now the board was not laid. The old Mother had no fatted calf to kill, nor 
even energy to prepare a little substantial food for the famishing. . . . They 
went away irritated, incensed, and with bitter regret that ever they had come. 

Shall We Have Any Doctrine? 

There has been much talk of late as though the Church that is to follow 
the war wou'd have no doctrine. Men are said to be righteously impatient con- 
cerning dogma, and agreed that it is insincere and unprofitable. If so, the feeling 
is not wholly a product of the war, though the war has given to it forcible 
expression. 

Here, for example, is how Donald Hankey put the dilemma of the "average 
man" desiring to join the Church of England: 

Here am I, at the most important moment of my life, when I am trying to 
make a clean start in a new sort of life altogether, and I have got to make a 
public and solemn confession of faith with all sorts of mental reservations. 
I don't like it. Why can't I say straight out what you and I really believe? 

With this place the following significant admission of Mr. Cavendish Moxon, 
one of the modernist clergy: 

By constant repetition in our worship of statements we know to be untrue, and 
of sentiment we know to be unchristian, we have compelled thousands of 
people, who desire to worship in sincerity and truth, either to stop at home or 
to form the fatal habit of repeating as a matter of course words to which in 
heart and mind they cannot assent. 

Men are going to demand sincerity and reality, but they are not going to 
demand that there be no doctrine. On the contrary, there is more likely to be 
a revival of interest in doctrine, and unless there be true doctrine there will be 
all manner of false doctrine, and men will be led astray by it. 

In order to see what men are thinking of in matters of religion. Principal 
Garvie observed carefully the correspondence in the British dailj' press recently 
for a period. He found there were four things emphasized, as quoted in "Christian 
Work," (1) Can we, confronted by the great war, believe in God the Father 
Almighty, or must we surrender either His Fatherhood or His Almightiness? (2) Is 
the war driving us back to the old doctrine of total depravity and original sin, in 

— 20-<. 



THE REBUILDING OF THE WORLD 



spite of everything science and psychology has taught to the contrary? (3) Has 
the Sermon on the Mount been superseded and the Christian ideal proved imprac- 
ticable, and is it true, as we have been hearing in the House of Commons, that there 
is nothing doing in Christianity? (4) Is it well with those who have fallen in 
battle? These things, says Principal Garvie, are the real things in religion and 
the things with which the Church must deal. 

Commenting on them. Dr. Samuel Dickey says: "Think of these a moment — 
reduced to theological terms they are, God, Sin, Christian Social Ethics, Immortality. 
^iow these are the real things in Christianity, the fundamentals of religious expe- 
rience. We have spent too much time on the trivialities, on the embroideries, and 
suddenly we have discovered there is not sufficient cloth to complete our garment. 
We have av/akened to the fact that when men need bread we should not offer them 
cake. Yet their bread-hunger is not new. Only it has taken the world catastrophe 
to reveal it to us." 

The Church will have doctrine, and plenty of it. It will be doctrine of a 
vigorous and stern kind. It will teach that all men are children of God, but it 
will also declare and prove that some of them act like the devil. 

It will not hesitate to affirm that there is such a thing as sin, and the sin which 
it talks about will not be the gentle negative goodness which we assumed sin to 
be as late as 1913. We know that sin which originates in selfishness, pride, 
inordinate ambition, results in arson, murder, rape, the violation of treaties and 
the desolation of fair lands. 

We shall not be offended at the doctrine of vicarious sacrifice; for we shall 
know that the world has been saved again and again by the shedding of blood. 

And no matter what we teach, the Church and the world, and especially the 
men who have gone down into the jaws of death, are going to believe in 
immortality. 

Some Things Will Not Change 

We are not to forget that there are some constant factors in the work of the 
Church. Some things will not be changed by the war or its ending. 

There will be changes in the furniture business, but the manufacturers of 
furniture will not assume that men after the war will be eight feet tall. There 
will be changes in the boot and shoe business, but shoemakers will not assume 
that all humanity will either wear wooden legs or walk on stilts. There will be 
changes in the clothing business, but makers of cloth and of garments will not 
assume that humanity is to begin at the Garden of Eden and make it habiliments 
out of fig leaves. 

There are some things in religion which will not be changed. Men and women 
will still be here with the same passions, the same aspirations, the same sins, the 
same need of comfort and inspiration and spiritual fellowship. The Church 
will have the same text-book, the Bible; and it will do well to discover the Book 
itself and not merely theories or even facts about it; and above all to discover 
throughout its progressive revelation those elements which are constant and which 
remain unchanged. The Church will have the same Saviour. Nothing has 
occurred since 1914 A. D. or since 1914 B. C. which makes the world's need of 
a Saviour any less, or which calls for any other kind of a Saviour. 

— 21 — 



THE REBUILDING OF THE WORLD 

The Dawn of a New Hope 

There is a memorable incident in "The Wreckers" which Robert Louis Steven- 
son wrote in collaboration with Lloyd Osborn. The crews of two schooners, neither 
of them engaged in any too reputable an adventure, came to mortal combat. The 
fight once begun, it became inevitably a battle to extermination. The situation 
was such that neither party once engaged in the fight could enter into court with 
clean hands, nor could either afford to leave alive any other witnesses than its 
own company. The surviving crew was of the two the less reprehensible, though 
to it fell the bloody business of finishing the grim encounter. If they failed of a 
complete job, the gallows invited the victors. So they did what it seemed they 
had to do. The description of the closing incidents of the fight is not pretty 
reading, but through it the reader carries the conviction that in the circumstances 
there is practically nothing else to be done. 

Night fell, and its short twilight left the victors to sleep, or toss in horrid 
wakefulness on the hastily cleaned deck. Then came the terrible dawn, when 
these murderers had to look each other in the face and remember what they had 
done and seen each other do. 

Two things brought them back to life. One was the activity of the native cook. 
He awoke like the rest, sick in mind and body. But "the habit of obedience 
ruled in his simple spirit, and appalled to be so late, he went directly to the galley, 
kindled the fire, and began to get breakfast." That act suggested to the others 
the simple duties which they also needed to perform. The blessed drudgery of 
daily habit, the sacrament of monotonous toil, gave to each his appointed and 
customary task. They worked, they bathed, they ate. 

This was the other thing. While they all had been guilty, and the most guilty of 
all had been the captain of the slaughtered crew, the prime offender among the 
survivors was an Irishman, whose hot temper had been the immediate occasion of 
the fight. He not only shared the common guilt of the survivors, but felt a special 
burden for it. 

"It's me that brought this trouble on the lot of ye," said Mac. "I'm sorry 
for it, and I ask all your pardons; and if there's any man of ye can say, T forgive 
ye,' it'll make my soul the lighter." 

They all had need to forgive and be forgiven, and they could not very well 
afford any too fine discriminations against one of their own company. They all 
forgave him, and acknowledged their own share in the common sin. 

"I thank ye for ut, and 'tis done like gentlemen," said Mac. "But there's 
another thing upon my mind. Why shouldn't we say the Lord's Prayer?" 

Thankful for any suggestion that had in it any hope of spiritual relief, they 
fell with one accord on their knees on the deck. All but Mac. 

"Kneel if ye like," he said. "I stand!" 

They continued kneeling; he stood and covered his eyes, and together they 
repeated the one prayer which they all knew. 

"Now they had faced their remorse in company," says the narrative, "the 
worst was over. Nor was that all. The petition 'Forgive us our trespasses' falling 
so apposite after they had themselves forgiven the immediate author of their 
miseries, sounded like an absolution." 

"The Wrecker" is not considered one of Stevenson's greatest books, but that 
incident is based on a true psychology. It is a great incident. These men had 
committed murder together. The provocation had been strong, almost compelling, 

— 23 n - 



THE REBUILDING OF THE WORLD 



but still was murder, and they knew it. They were sick in body and memory and 
imagination, for rough as they were and in some sort lawless, they had not meant 
to do it at the outset. 

Life held for them the certain horror of what they could never forget, and 
they could have wished themselves among the dead rather than the living. But 
the two things that pulled them back out of the abyss into the boat of life were the 
blessedness of drudgery, and the healing of forgiveness and prayer. 

The world has come to such an hour. There is now a dawn when it must rise 
from a nightmare and face the white glare of a new day. It stands shamed by 
its hideous trenches, its welters of blood, its ruined cities, its desolate lands, its 
accusing memories. 

What is to give it new life and hope? 

First there are the imperative physical necessities. The world must eat to live, 
and there must be sowing and reaping and cooking and turning of wheels, and the 
rehabilitation of railroads and the making back into engines of construction of the 
factories that have been devoted to munitions, and the tilling of fields and the restor- 
ation of waste places. The world will be poor, and will have to utilize its soil and 
all its resources in the work of restoration. Whenever men fight, someone starves; 
and the world must work soon and hard or we shall all starve. 

And then must come a spiritual impulse. There must be a turning of hearts 
to God, and toward one another. The world must begin again, and begin with 
the blessing of God. 

This and this only can restore to the world some semblance of its shattered 
hope. 

Weary of war, and ashamed when it faces its own conscience, the world is 
ready for spiritual guidance. It needs to rebuild not only its roads but its ideals; 
to reconstruct not only its soil but the ground of its spiritual confidence; to raise 
up from the ashes and the depths not only its cities and its ships but its everlasting 
hopes. It is a time for the ministry of the Church to feel as they never have felt 
before the mighty impulse of the Spirit of God. The prophet that hath a dream 
let him tell a dream, and let it receive whatever credit may be attached to the 
value of a dream. But the prophet that hath the Word of God, let him speak that 
word; for a bleeding, sinful and sorely stricken world awaits the prophetic message. 

The prophet Ezekiel had a vision of a valley of dry bones. It was a fairly 
accurate photograph of his conception of the life of his own nation as the exile 
drew to its close. "Can these dry bones live?" This was the question which 
distressed him, and no wonder. God only knew whether they could come back to 
life again and whether if bone should come to bone so that they stood erect 
and with flesh upon them, God could rebuild in that disillusioned manhood "the 
music and the dream." Difficult as it was, the thing proved to be not quite 
impossible; that day had its spiritual leadership. May our day not find it lacking. 
May the ministry and the Church achieve a spiritual victory which the world shall 
know to be such. May there be a message that nothing in the past since Pentecost 
has equally manifested as witnessing the outpouring and the sustained and progres- 
sive guidance of the Holy Spirit. 



— 33 — 



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